{"id":78495,"date":"2013-03-22T01:57:57","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T01:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=78495"},"modified":"2013-03-25T09:39:28","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T09:39:28","slug":"resolution-on-sl-voted-on-and-over-where-goes-tn-eelamists-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/resolution-on-sl-voted-on-and-over-where-goes-tn-eelamists-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Resolution On SL Voted On And Over; Where Goes TN \u201cEelamists\u201d Now ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Kusal Perera<\/a><\/span> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kusal Perera<\/p><\/div>\n

The Resolution by the US, supported by the EU and just 02 countries \u2013 India and South Korea \u2013 out of 13 in the Asian bloc voting in favour at the UNHRC<\/a><\/span> sessions in Geneva brought to an end, the much hyped issue of \u201cwar crimes\u201d accusations against the Rajapaksa regime, some in the Tamil Diaspora and most in Tamil Nadu<\/a><\/span> (TN) were very vociferous about. Adopted with 25 votes, the resolution has a procedural binding on the SL government and it is now left to be seen, what outcome this would have, in favour of war victims.<\/span><\/p>\n

Slogans carried by TN student agitations and protests were very much distant from what the Geneva UNHRC sessions and resolution were about. These student agitations were triggered by small extremist groups and the stance taken by the two main political rivals in TN, each trying to outdo the other. This led the two iconic leaders to compromise with extremist groups that have no political responsibility to what they agitate on. This irresponsibility was very apparent by physical attacks against Sri Lankan pilgrims<\/a><\/span> going through Chennai and attacks on Sri Lankan institutes in Chennai. Worst were mainstream political parties and human rights groups and activists, who dodged condemning these goon attacks, thinking they would lose ground in Tamil Nadu.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

That defeatist attitude of most such human rights activists was displayed by my good friend Pon Chandran<\/a><\/span> from Chennai, who laments writing to CT<\/a><\/span>, the international community is not responding to the \u201cJUST\u201d voice of the Tamil students. He is writing about those students in Tamil Nadu, who do not know the \u201cA.B.C of Tamil politics in SL\u201d. Therefore, these \u201criffraff\u201d in political agitations think it is necessary to back the appeal for the demand to end \u201cgenocide against Tamils in SL through a UN sponsored Referendum\u201d to establish a \u201cTamil Eelam<\/a><\/span>\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This writer tried to engage TN human rights and Tamil activists including Pon Chandran, on this issue of a \u201creferendum for a separate Tamil State\u201d in North-East Sri Lanka, as requested by Tamils for Obama in the US, now shouldered by TN fringe groups, compromised by even opportunists like Karunanidhi. Following are excerpts from that essay titled <\/span><\/span>\u201cReferendum Call for ‘Thamil Eezham’; Could It Serve SL Tamils in Sri Lanka ?\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/span>, circulated among TN, Bangalore and New Delhi contacts in the human rights and civil liberty groups. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Excerpts from essay –<\/strong><\/p>\n

This paper is an attempt to politically dissect the call for a \u201cReferendum\u201d in establishing a \u201cSovereign Thamil Eezham State\u201d in North \u2013 East Sri Lanka (SL), that is being campaigned and lobbied for via internet and of late is being picked up by some groups and political parties in neighbouring Thamil Nadu in projecting themselves as very much concerned about Tamil people in SL and also as their rallying call for TN politics. What prompts this political intervention in seeing through this call for a \u201cThamil Eezham\u201d from outside Sri Lanka, is the total \u201cdisconnect\u201d with and its irrelevance to Tamil politics in Sri Lanka.<\/span><\/p>\n

Right to Self Determination \u2013 What Does It Mean ?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Right to self determination\u201d in Marxist formulation, accepts the right of a nation of people under \u201coppression\u201d to secede from its earlier formation of a State, to form its own separate State.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Marxists, a \u201cnationalistic movement\u201d demanding its own \u201cright to determine\u201d how its people as a society would live within a multi linguistic, multi cultural nation State, is about supporting increased and improved functional democracy of the State, that allows all oppressed social segments and classes to have their own cultural and class identity within modern capitalist development of that nation State. As Marx enlarged on the right of Ireland to secede, Irish people can remain federated as an autonomous nation with England, if the Irish people can have a democratic nation State of their own, accepted by the dominant class of the English society. And that can not be ruled out.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason for such complex formulations on the \u201cright to self determination\u201d of a nation is the duality in how a \u201cnation\u201d and a \u201cState\u201d is defined and identified. A \u201cNation\u201d is not necessarily a \u201cState\u201d. The Australian \u201cnation\u201d and the Australian \u201cState\u201d can politically coincidence. It is the single expression of political power of that single nation and that coincides. But in most countries like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, there is contradiction that makes the political expression of the dominant majority nation, refusing or reluctant to accept other smaller nations in its expression of political power, as the State. The refusal or reluctance is about who would own capitalist development and its benefits through State power.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is what generally is termed \u201cmarginalisation\u201d of minorities, in the current context in our part of the world, where capitalist development in a \u201cnation State\u201d becomes the main political debate and life. This is precisely what was written into the DMK programme in 1963, when it gave up on its demand for a separate Dravidian State. The ability and the possibility to remain as \u201cpolitical equals\u201d within a State, is also what Dr. Anton Balasingham<\/a><\/span> interpreted as \u201cInternal self determination\u201d, when the LTTE<\/span> <\/a>agreed to work out a \u201cfederal system\u201d of governance. It was based on that conceptual democratic space, the LTTE signed the Oslo Declaration in 2002 December.<\/span><\/p>\n

Background To \u201cReferendum\u201d Appeal<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

On 02 January, 2009, the Sri Lankan army waging war against the LTTE, walked into an empty, abandoned Kilinochchi town that was \u201cthe hub\u201d of the LTTE for well over a decade and a half. A week later on 09 January, the SL army stormed through Elephant Pass, after 23 years of complete LTTE control of the A-9 road. From Adampan to Kilaly to Kilinochchi and then Elephant Pass, it was only a story of the LTTE retreating, holding the ordinary people as their buffer and the SL army advancing.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the LTTE was facing defeat at every crucial location, a new Tamil group in the US that calculated Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama’s victory at the US presidential elections, came together as \u201cTamils for Obama\u201d (sounds pretty opportunistic) and on 07 March, 2009, two months after Elephant Pass fell, wrote to President Obama, requesting a US initiated resolution to have an \u201cEast Timor type referendum\u201d in North-East Sri Lanka, supervised by the UN. They also wrote to all UN members asking for support for such a referendum, referring to South Sudan as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their timing in asking for such a UN Resolution, confuses all logic in accepting it as pragmatic and realistic, for many serious reasons. Month of March 2009, was when news started percolating about the political and military sections in the LTTE contradicting each other and moving apart, in deciding how they could \u201cface defeat\u201d at the hands of the SL security forces. By end April, the two sections had two very clear, different and opposing approaches in facing a military defeat. While the political group led by Pullidevan and Nadesan decided to surrender (and may be thought, they could later develop as an open political group like how the JVP<\/a><\/span> came round after heavy repression and defeat of the 1971 insurgency), the military wing led by Prabhakaran<\/a><\/span> was going to \u201cfight till death\u201d. This contradiction in the LTTE was eventually proved, at the closing of the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

In such context of political and military defeat, for a small Tamil group in far off US to ask for a separate \u201cThamil Eezham\u201d was more than eccentric. The last concluding sentence in that appeal by \u201cTamils for Obama\u201d, is also quite amusing. \u201cTamils for Obama is comprised of <\/span>Tamils who have settled in the U.S. or who were born in the US<\/strong><\/span>\u201d[emphasis added] they said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Disconnected arguments on referendum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The letter sent out by \u201cTamils for Obama\u201d has a two part argument put forward. One is to say, a referendum as in East \u2013 Timor would end \u201cgenocide of Tamils\u201d in SL. The other is that there is \u201cgenocide\u201d continuing in SL. It says,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>While you are certainly familiar with the U.N.’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, let us remind you that this document defines any of the following acts as genocide:
\n(a) Killing members of the group;
\n(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
\n(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
\n(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
\n(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.<\/span><\/p>\n

Items (a), (b), and (c) are well documented as on-going events in Sri Lanka. Many impeccable sources refer to the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The major qualifying explanation that had been left out by \u201cTamils for Obama\u201d in their appeal reads as, “<\/strong>Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:…..\u201d<\/strong> (emphasis added)<\/p>\n

The East \u2013 Timor’s referendum is therefore briefly sketched as follows.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    East-Timor’s ground for referendum –<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n